18 months in prison for man who threatened Colorado official

By MARGERY A. BECK
Associated Press

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska man has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for online threats he made last year against Colorado’s top elections official in one of the first cases brought by a federal task force devoted to protecting elections workers across the U.S. who have been subject to increasing threats. Travis Ford was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Lincoln, Nebraska, after pleading guilty earlier this year to sending threats to Secretary of State Jena Griswold on social media. Griswold is a national advocate for elections security who has received thousands of threats over her insistence that the 2020 election was secure and that former President Donald Trump’s claims that it was stolen from him are false.